Paloma and the Horse Traders

by Carla Kelly

  Marco looked around this smaller circle, these people he trusted. “Graciela, the purchase of firearms will take place at noon tomorrow between those two peaks. Do you know them?”

  “Yes, the Two Brothers,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. She pointed beyond the more southerly peak. “That is where Great Owl’s village will be located. It is high and hidden.”

  “How certain are you that Great Owl will be there?” Marco asked.

  “Positive, señor,” she replied firmly. “Great Owl always camps there. Who does he have to fear?” She gestured in a sweeping motion as graceful as her name. “There is a pass uniting the two sites.”

  “Even better,” Marco said. Next he turned to Lorenzo. “Answer me honestly now.” He gestured to Benedict, still curled so tight. “Let him be your bad example of someone who thinks he will lie.”

  Lorenzo gulped and nodded.

  “Have you ever dealt with Great Owl?”

  “Once,” Lorenzo said, with no hesitation. “Of course, I had a long beard then and long hair. I didn’t smell as sweet, either. He has never seen me looking this handsome.”

  “Would you truly like to be a hero for Sancha?”

  Lorenzo colored, dipped his head like a little boy, then nodded, while Rogelio whooped. The sound was cut short by a backhanded slap, but Rogelio still grinned.

  “Would you pretend to be a French trader?” Marco asked Lorenzo. “You, too, Rogelio.”

  “Only if I know there are some of you looking down on me, and hopefully ready with bows and arrows and maybe even some firearms. We don’t need to sell him all of them, do we?”

  Joaquim’s eyes narrowed. “Why are we selling him any muskets at all?”

  “I want my slave money back.”

  “You surprise me, Brother,” Claudio said.

  Marco turned to Graciela. “You would let someone as foolish as my brother-in-law hold your hand?” He turned hard eyes on Claudio next. “If he somehow survives what we are planning, I do not want him to have one single centavo to purchase more guns.”

  Marco turned to Joaquim, who stood watching this whole exchange with amusement. “You there, my royal engineer. Did your professors teach you how to foul up a firing piece?”

  “No, no! I learned that in a bar in La Havana, Cuba,” Joaquim replied. “Saved my life, I think. Certainly that part that David Benedict nearly lost.”

  Marco looked around this smaller circle, wondering when it was that he had become a leader, and not just a juez de campo. There were probably jueces all over New Mexico who checked brands, registered them, collected taxes, and minded their own business. Why was he not among that number?

  He gestured for Rain Cloud to join them, wishing he could erase the sorrow from his old friend’s eyes. He remembered with painful clarity the three days and nights they had lain side by side five years ago, wounded after the first battle with Cuerno Verde. He remembered the taste of the buffalo and wild grass stew that Rain Cloud’s wife had fed them both, as she scolded them in her gentle voice for taking so many chances. She was dead now, and must be avenged.

  “My friend, how many warriors have you?” he asked.

  “No more than twenty, I regret to say.”

  “Get your men, and listen to what I propose.”

  He waited while Rain Cloud gathered his warriors—Kapota Utes who sometimes allied with the New Mexicans, and sometimes with Comanches, depending on how the wind blew. They filed into the growing circle and sat down by their chief, silent.

  Marco squatted on his haunches. “Here is what I want to do.” He pointed with his lips to Graciela. “You know this little one. She and her mother lived among you until four years ago, when Great Owl swooped down, silent as the bird that is his totem.”

  Everyone nodded. He had their attention. “Tomorrow at noon, Great Owl, our common enemy, will buy guns from French traders.”

  “Toshua and I killed the traders,” Rain Cloud reminded him. He looked over his shoulder at Benedict. “And this one is worthless.”

  “I know,” Marco said. “May they burn in hell. Lorenzo, stand up.”

  Surprised, the horse trader did as he asked.

  “Lorenzo here, a hero in many parts of New Mexico, will pretend to be a French trader.”

  Marco smiled inside as Lorenzo stood a little taller and struck a pose. If I didn’t know you better, I would be impressed, he thought.

  “But guns—” Rain Cloud began.

  “Tss, tss, tss,” Marco cautioned. He indicated Joaquim Gasca, a thorough-going rascal who had richly deserved being broken down to private. We work with what we have, Marco thought. “This hero is going to fix those guns so they will not fire.”

  “That will be magic,” Rain Cloud said, and looked at Joaquim with more respect than anyone had assigned such a scoundrel in recent memory.

  Marco drew in the dirt with his dagger, forming the Two Brothers and that jog in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains as they continued south, then handed his knife to Graciela. She knew what he wanted, and drew a line from the Two Brothers over the hump of the Cristos, and partly down to the eastern side of the mountain range.

  “Here is the danger,” Marco said. “I will not try to fool you. I would like five of your warriors with me, as we watch our hero Lorenzo sell bad guns to Great Owl, who will probably have brought many of his warriors with him. I say ‘probably,’ because I do not know.”

  “Who can know these things?” Rain Cloud said philosophically.

  “Who, indeed? Not my God and all his saints, nor your totem the bear, who knows so much and gives you his wisdom. At the time we are making our trade, you and the rest of your warriors will strike Great Owl’s camp with its women and children.” He looked around at the men, who were now listening intently. “Some of you will probably be able to rescue your own women and children.”

  They all sat in silence, everyone considering the plan, a plan of ifs. Marco looked from face to face, weighing what he saw. Governor de Anza’s words echoed in his mind and heart: “We have to work together to live in this land.”

  “The traders will make the deal and leave the guns that will do them no good. Rain Cloud, I will depend on you to allow at least one person on horseback to escape,” Marco told them. “This person will surely race to alert Great Owl that his women and children are in peril.”

  “It will be his turn to suffer!” one of the warriors shouted. The others shouted, too, and David Benedict whimpered.

  “When the message has been delivered, Great Owl and his warriors will ride toward their camp, which you and your braves will already control. We will fire on Great Owl from the cliffs’ heights, because we will have kept some of the good guns for ourselves. We will kill as many as we can, but you must be ready to fight the ones who slip through.”

  To Marco’s chagrin, Rain Cloud stood and gestured to his warriors. They followed him from the circle without a word. Joaquim made a sound of disgust. Marco shook a finger at him, demanding silence.

  “They are thinking about it.”

  “You know these people, don’t you?” Joaquim asked.

  “I do.” He leaned toward the royal engineer. “If you expect to remain alive in this colony, you had better come to know them, too.” He looked at the Utes, standing close together, talking and gesturing. “And do you know something else? I like the Kapota Utes.”

  But had he convinced these beaten people that they could yet avenge a terrible wrong? Marco closed his eyes, tired down to his toes, wanting nothing more than to crawl into his own bed and hold Paloma close. I have become so simple, he thought.

  He opened his eyes as Rain Cloud and his warriors returned to the circle. “We will do this thing,” the chief said. He sighed and looked to the western mountains. “When we are done, we will move to the more distant cloud mountains where the sun sets.” He shook his head. “I fear our friend the bear has already begun that journey.”

  “Not yet,” Marco said. “He’s licking his wounds. He w
ill roar again. He will roar tomorrow.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  In which the bear roars

  “We have no time to spare,” Marco said. Soon even the few surviving women and children were helping lift the heavy boxes from the wagon to the ground. Joaquim pried off the lids and stood a moment, staring down at the beautiful muskets; then he barked out orders, very much the royal engineer again.

  He sent Claudio for small twigs. “Straight and narrow,” Joaquim ordered.

  Claudio looked for Graciela to help him. He swallowed a lump in his throat to watch the slave dip a partially burned cloth into a buffalo bladder filled with warm water. She pulled away the burned part, wrung it out, and knelt by David Benedict, who still lay on the ground, trying to make himself smaller.

  Benedict closed his eyes in evident relief as she wiped his grimy face, her touch so gentle. Gradually Benedict straightened out and allowed her to clean his chest and his private parts. He started to weep again, this time in humiliation, while she cleaned his filth as kindly as if he were a small child Claudito’s age.

  Claudio came closer in time to hear her say, “Just do as you are told and you will live. I am a slave, and that is what I do.”

  “I don’t speak his language,” Graciela said to Claudio, embarrassed. “He knows a little Spanish, but very little, I think.”

  “He feels your kindness,” Claudio assured her. “You’re the one nice thing that has happened to him in an awful day.”

  “Sometimes how we speak is more important than what we say,” she replied. She folded her hands in her lap, and didn’t even look at him. “What I do is this, Claudio: what I wish someone had done to me.” She looked up, and he saw her kindness directed at him, as if everyone else in the battered clearing had suddenly disappeared. “If you do that, too, you’ll be happier.”

  He tried to think of some scathing rejoinder, some careless answer, but none came to mind. Graciela Tafoya spoke the truth.

  He saw the moment as a choice. He could ignore her or he could respond. Something told him—maybe there was a God—that his response would rule his life from this moment on, no matter how long or short it was. No one living on the edge of Comanchería had any guarantee.

  Not caring who was watching, he knelt beside Graciela Tafoya. As David Benedict watched from worried eyes, Claudio leaned forward and touched his forehead to Graci’s. That was all he had the courage to do. He sat back on his haunches and watched her face as she pinked up, then gave him a smile so blinding that the sun should have just given up and gone away, a poor loser.

  “Be careful in the work of this day and tomorrow,” she said, and he heard herald angels clearing their throats and giving each other a note before breaking out in hallelujahs.

  Together they led David Benedict to a grassy spot. Graciela put his ruined trousers beside him. She pointed to the stream and made rubbing motions. Benedict just stared at her stupidly.

  “I fear he will not last long in New Mexico,” she said, with a shake of her head. “I do not trust him, but someone in St. Louis might miss him.”

  “It’s that easy?” he asked. “I just do good things?”

  He had no business wrapping his mind around such a subject, not with Joaquim on his knees by the muskets, and Marco and one of the Utes coming back to the clearing with clothes that the Frenchmen had worn, and Rain Cloud and his men whistling for what horses remained. He stared in further amazement as Lorenzo and Rogelio cut out five of their stolen horses and led them toward the Indians—Lorenzo, who never gave anything to anyone without exacting some sort of payment. He took her by the hand.

  “You do good things,” she repeated. She nudged his shoulder and held out a handful of twigs. She covered his hand with hers, twigs and all. “Claudio, every morning, even when things were so awful, I hoped that maybe this day, it would be different. And now it is.”

  She startled him further by kissing his cheek. “Don’t think so hard. Take these to Joaquim.”

  By early afternoon, Joaquim had driven slender twigs into the touch holes of four crates of muskets, keeping back two each for the men who would be watching above the rendezvous site. Graciela had carefully daubed a bit of soot in each hole to hide any hint of bare wood. Joaquim had pawed through the crates, snatching up all the vent picks so no one could remove the twig, if they happened to notice.

  Marco did everything the engineer demanded, marveling to himself how someone previously dedicated to wine and women could take command when the situation warranted. If they survived this admittedly foolhardy attempt, maybe he would see if he really had enough influence with Governor de Anza to request that Private Joaquim Gasca be returned to his rightful rank. Crazier things had happened.

  A superstitious man, Lorenzo Diaz had been reluctant to don the clothes worn by one of the dead Frenchmen. He changed his mind after Toshua grabbed him by his chin and stared long and hard into his eyes. “I took his clothes off him before I killed him,” Toshua snapped. “Don’t be a baby.”

  In a short time, Lorenzo was peacocking about, reminding Marco of Paloma in a new dress, one with shape and style and no drawstrings to allow for a growing belly. He still owed her a pair of red dancing shoes. If he survived tomorrow, he would get her those shoes. Funny what a man thinks about, when death is a distinct possibility.

  Marco watched in pleasant surprise as Joaquim continued his relentless efforts to prepare them all. Lorenzo was less than pleased to find Joaquim digging through the little cart that Rogelio drove, which carried their few possessions. He turned nearly apoplectic when Joaquim pounced on three bottles of rum in deep green glass. As Marco held Lorenzo back, Joaquim popped the corks, took a sip and then poured out the rest.

  “Why?” he demanded. “Why?”

  “Because I can make excellent bombas out of these with the loose powder.” Joaquim dug deeper as Marco started to laugh. He yanked out a shirt and made the mistake of sniffing it. “Or we could just throw this at Great Owl.”

  On Joaquim’s directions, Marco wrapped the three bottles in the reeking shirt and stuffed them into his saddlebags. The altered muskets went back in their crates, with eight working firearms set aside. For lack of any other container, Marco emptied out his extra clothes from his parfleche and carefully poured most of the black power into the leather case. Graciela stuffed several large rocks into the powder keg, smoothing over the black powder until the level rose closer to the top again.

  Soon there was nothing left to do except go. Stuffed full of good advice, Lorenzo and Rogelio left first, accompanied by a Ute warrior to guide them. “Yes, yes,” the horse trader assured Marco. “We will hug Montaña Blanca like a one-centavo whore and this Kapota will lead us through that saddle in the mountains, so we can come at the Two Brothers from the north.”

  “Don’t take any chances,” Marco said.

  “Everything we are doing is a chance, señor,” Lorenzo reminded him. “If I don’t return, tell Sancha … tell Sancha ….”

  “What?” Marco asked.

  “That I went to my death thinking of her and smelling sweet.”

  “I will do that,” Marco said, as he admired his own control. You smelled sweet two weeks ago, you old rascal, he thought. One bath needs to be followed by another. “I will,” he repeated, grateful for the courage of the men he rode with, even if they did smell ripe.

  Afternoon shadows settled in the San Luis Valley as the wagon and riders disappeared into the distance. Soon sheltering night would come. Rain Cloud and his warriors left next, accompanied by Claudio and Graciela. Marco feared for her, but there wasn’t a safe place with any of the parties. Rain Cloud and his warriors would ride through the night through mountain passes Marco didn’t even want to think about, because heights were not his best friend. Revenge and sorrow fueled them and he did not doubt they would succeed.

  “She has her reasons for riding with Rain Cloud,” Claudio told him, and they sat close together on their horses. “Did you know … she had a baby
with the Comanches, a girl about one year old now.”

  “She wants her child,” Marco said. Only a few years ago, he would have heard that news with real distaste. Now he just hoped she found the little one. He put his hand over Claudio’s hand on his pommel. “Help her all you can.”

  That wasn’t enough. Marco rode to Graciela. “Know this: Lorenzo is going to deal in muskets with Great Owl, a truly evil man. If he succeeds, he will get my money back that I paid for you. When he does, you will not be my slave anymore. You may do as you please. Granted, Paloma will still need your help, but I can find someone else to take your place, if you have other plans.”

  “I have never made a plan in my life, señor,” she told him.

  “Then it is high time you started.”

  It warmed his heart that she turned to look at Claudio, who was talking to Toshua, unaware of her glance. “Go with God,” he told her.

  “Wait!”

  Marco turned around to see David Benedict on his feet, holding both his hands high.

  Joaquim guided his horse closer to the man, who still trembled and gave Toshua a wide berth. They spoke, and Joaquim turned to Marco. “He doesn’t want to be left behind.”

  “I had forgotten him,” Marco admitted. “What should we do?”

  “You’re the leader,” Joaquim said, with faint surprise.

  “I think you have become our leader,” Marco said, inwardly pleased with how Joaquim’s face lighted up, even as he shook his head in denial. “Well, then, we are co-leaders,” he said. Leaning closer, he added, “But I believe Toshua rules us all.”

  They laughed together. “I say we take him,” Joaquim said. “We have another horse. Perhaps he will be useful.”

  “If he doesn’t betray us.” Marco contemplated the frightened man. “Let him know that if he does anything to put us in harm’s way, I will turn him over to Toshua.”